Building a Boot Camp: Pediatric Residency Preparatory Course Design Workshop and Tool Kit

Abstract

Introduction: Although many medical schools are adding residency preparatory courses or boot camps to their curricula, there is little published guidance for faculty tasked with designing them. We developed a workshop and accompanying boot camp course design tool kit to assist faculty in creating a pediatric boot camp course following the initial steps of Kern's framework for curriculum development. Methods: Learners participated in a 2-hour workshop incorporating short didactics, guided independent reflection, and group discussions. Workshop facilitators guided faculty through the tool kit materials including a literature overview, a needs assessment worksheet, session prioritization and schedule planning worksheets, a module design worksheet, and implementation strategies. Results: Twenty-seven attendees at a national meeting of undergraduate pediatric educators participated in the workshop. Feedback was solicited via an anonymous electronic survey (41% completion rate), which indicated that attendees' self-assessed confidence significantly increased for each component of the tool kit. For the five tool kit components surveyed, average confidence increased 26% (range: 17.5%-37.1%) after completing the workshop. All respondents also indicated that the tool kit would be moderately helpful to very helpful as a stand-alone resource for independent faculty use, corresponding to a 3.57 out of 5 weighted average for this Likert-scale question. Discussion: We developed a pediatric boot camp course design workshop and tool kit to assist faculty in developing pediatric boot camps. Initial implementation was through a workshop, but the resource could be used individually and also adapted for use by other specialties.

Transition-to-residency: pilot innovative, online case-based curriculum for medical students preparing for pediatric internships

“…In 2014, the American Association for Medical Colleges (AAMC) published new guidelines that detailed 13 Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) that all medical students should be able to perform upon entering residency as a response to evidence that medical school students are sub-optimally prepared for residency[ 4 ]. Few publications have described transition-to-residency curricula specifically for students starting pediatric training[ 5 ]. While more recent literature has described the movement of such curricula online via applications such as Zoom, the structure of curricula remains essentially the same, with learning occurring synchronously, but at a distance[ 6 ].…”

Qualitative Analysis of a Virtual Near-Peer Pediatric Boot Camp Elective

“…While residency preparatory boot camps are not novel, we believe our boot camp is the first in pediatrics to utilize a near-peer teaching model. Other published pediatric boot camps have been developed and facilitated only by attending faculty [3,22,23], and a recently published toolkit for developing pediatric boot camps does not mention utilizing nearpeers as facilitators [24]. Given the reported increased level of engagement that resulted from relatedness to near-peers, we believe that near-peer education may be underutilized in pediatric residency preparatory courses.…”

How Prepared Are They? Pediatric Boot Camps and Intern Performance

“…Members included the study authors and other educators nationally recognized as leaders in boot camp curriculum design and implementation. 22 Authors designed the study, and members of the study group facilitated implementation of the study at individual institutions.…”

“…Participation in at least 5 days of pediatric-specific coursework was considered a pediatric boot camp, and participation of 0 to 4 days of pediatric-specific coursework, including within a general boot camp, was considered a general boot camp. The decision to make 5 days or more the accepted standard for "pediatric boot camp" participation was based on published national data on the distribution of boot camp duration 22 and by consensus of the authors.…”